the world of private banking

JEwISH PRIVAtE BANKS 221
international syndicate of the haute banque, deposit and investment banks set up
their own syndicate in August 1871 on the initiative of the Banque de Paris to benefit
from operations undertaken by the French government. Providing the government
with foreign currency and bills led the syndicate to promote underwriting abroad
through a wide network of correspondents. The Bischoffsheims federated these
partners in 1872 by constituting the Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas with numerous
members of the European haute banque as well as German, French, Belgian,
Dutch, Swiss, Austrian and Danish bankers. Jewish bankers like Henri Bamberger,
Maurice de Hirsch, Goldschmidt of London, Edouard Fould and Antoine Stern sat
alongside Protestant and Catholic ones.
The most striking feature of the competition between private banks and jointstock
banks was the ability of the latter to collect growing external resources.
However, until World War I, Jewish private bankers preserved their influence on
the financial markets. During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, newcomers
settled on the main European markets while the New York German Jewish
bankers’ community prospered. The former founded investment banks like Lazard
Brothers in London and Paris, the Camondos moved from Istanbul to Paris, the
Seligman Brothers were established in most of the European places, and the young
Franz Philippson founded his bank in Brussels in 1876 and won a high reputation
negotiating lottery loans with Belgian municipalities. Above all, Ernest Cassel, the
son of a Cologne banker who arrived in London in 1870 at the age of 18, became
the most famous financier of that generation. On the eve of World War I, Simon
Lazard’s wealth amounted to but a tenth of the French Rothschilds’. Indeed, when
he died Gustave de Rothschild’s fortune was evaluated at £10 million, while Sir
Ernest Cassel at the time reached £7.5 million.
On the other hand, many private bankers kept influence by participating in the
foundation of the new joint-stock banks and sitting on their boards in England
and on the continent. In Belgium, Jewish private bankers were deeply involved
in the foundation of the Banque Bruxelles by Jacques Errera and several German
Jewish bankers in 1871, and of the Brussels branch of the Banque de Paris et des
Pays-Bas. The latter evicted the Rothschilds from the top of the Belgian financial
market which it, with the Société Générale, went on to dominate by the end of
the century. In some joint-stock banks, the first general managers belonged to
the milieu of Jewish private bankers. Let us recall the case of Herman Wallich at
the Deutsche Bank. As for Raphaël de Bauer, head of the Banque de Paris et des
Pays-Bas in Brussels from 1872 to 1916, he began his career as an employee of the
Banque Bischoffsheim-de Hirsch, married the daughter of Samuel Lambert, the
Rothschilds’ representative in Brussels, and was linked by matrimonial alliances
with the Rothschilds, Oppenheim, May, Goldschmidt and the Russian Jewish
family Gunzburg. One generation later, Horace Finaly, the influential manager
of the Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas, also belonged to a family of private
bankers. Nevertheless, when analysing the leadership of the joint-stock banks in
several European countries, one cannot but observe that Jewish membership faded
away more or less rapidly after their foundation. In Germany, the private bankers